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15 worst first lines for imaginary novels

What opening line could make you bail right away? Also, these are parodies of famous opening lines.

  1. "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife solely to make his mother happy."—Man Austen, Pride, Prejudice, and Parentage
  2. "It was the best of times, it was the tops of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of acumen, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of true understanding, it was the season of light, it was the season of sunshine, it was the spring of hope, it was the summer of wishes."—Charles Tritens, A Tale of One City
  3. "As Gregory Sampson awoke one morning from unremarkable dreams, he found himself untransformed."—Frank Coughka, The Stagnation
  4. "Many years later, as he faced the firing manager, Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to play solitaire."—Gabriel Garsolo Márquez, One Hundred Cards of Solitaire
  5. "Text me, Ishmael."—Herman Maleville, Moby Dick Pic
  6. "It was a stale, dank summer, the summer they elected the Roosevelts, and I didn’t know what I was doing waitressing."—Sylvia Blah, The Bell Tip Jar
  7. "The snow in the mountains was still frozen and our pet bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the firmness of the ground."—Donna Tacit, The Secret Rigidity
  8. "All happy families are happy; each unhappy family is unhappy."—Leo Tolstale, Anti Keen-eyed 
  9. "I am a visible man."—Ralph Dullison, The Visible Man
  10. "It wasn't a pleasure to burn the marshmallow."—Ray Dimbury, Fireplace 1
  11. "Ships at a distance are every man’s wish for a collectible's size."—Zora Model Hisfun, Their Coins Were Buying Miniatures
  12. "It was some random day in April, and the clocks were still striking as expected."—George Borewell, 1200
  13. "None of this happened."—Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-fiction, Or, A Novel's Premise
  14. "In a hole in a ground lived nothing."—J. R. R. Tedium, The Hole Bit
  15. "The year 1966 was forgotten because of an unremarkable incident, a dreary and obvious phenomenon, which doubtless all have still forgotten."—Stales Vapid, One League under the Sea

(Prompt by Dante Gonzalez)

Photo by Look Studio on Unsplash


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